WIT project explores ableism and gender discrimination towards Irish Deaf women

Students and staff from Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT)’s School of Humanities, and Dublin Theatre of the Deaf investigate Teresa Deevy’s ballet ‘Possession’.

A work never yet performed, to explore and analyse ableism and gender discrimination towards the Irish Deaf community and Deaf woman, in theatre practice research project Lyrical Bodies. 

Lyrical Bodies, in development throughout 2022, considers how Deaf women were dispossessed of status, achievement, and opportunity by the introduction of oralism in Deaf education in Ireland in the 1950s, and how Deaf women’s oppression and resistance to the usurping of power, status, and human rights continues in 21st century Ireland.

The project explores how Deaf women continue to experience and challenge intersecting discriminations of ableism and gender-based disempowerment today. 

The project builds on established relationships and research conducted by Dr Una Kealy and Dr Kate McCarthy from WIT’s Department of Arts, who are currently editing a collection of essays considering the work of Teresa Deevy entitled ‘Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy’. 

Dr Kealy said:

“How we experience the world shapes who and what we choose to be.

"Lyrical Bodies, in its exploration and sharing of Deaf women’s experiences of intersectional discrimination, seeks to challenge and change for the better Irish society’s framing, treatment, inclusion, and respect for people of various abilities and genders.

"Lyrical Bodies aims to expose casual, erroneous, and discriminatory assumptions related to disability using Deaf history and culture to reveal and interrogate how systemic issues and attitudes insidiously perpetrate discriminatory behaviour."

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